One is wearing a short, tight, white dress with side-vents like gills, the other, less

She eyes Darren

Josephine remains hunched into her mobile

Graffiti-printed, knuckle draggers ogle her and she drains her half-empty glass in recognition, gaze affixed to the blue and white interface

Josephine is one cursed with such beauty that she spends large amounts of time engaged in close examination of the pavement

They are husband and wife

They are Josephine and Darren Blakemore

They own a chain of vitamin retail stores and in the sense that one can take one’s work home, each day begins with a handful of A, D, E, B9, B12, Zinc, Omega 3, C, probiotic, prebiotic, calcium and spirulina

The containers take up large amounts of shelf space in their apartment

White silos of inner peace

In case of emergency, Josephine carries a small canister of multi-vitamins in her handbag at all times

They stand to depart

Darren leaves a generous tip and what he regards as an even more generous mobile number

Josephine remains poised to strike the virtual keypad and they walk in silence, back towards their home

An invisible vagrant plays a three stringed guitar

On the penultimate floor of a blue-glass monolith named Metropol, the city’s botanical gardens foreground an orderly skyline that shimmers under the pale crystal of a cloudless sky

Josephine flops onto a black leather settee and Darren makes his way past the marble bench top to the fridge, sleek, silver, 5-star energy rated

Organic, low fat everything stares back and Darren decides he’s not that hungry

Josephine trades her mobile for a laptop

“Babe,” he says

“Yes?” she replies

“I’m going to the gym”

“OK,” she says, before craning around to add, “Colette is coming over”

We’ll go tomorrow and pick out another one, OK?” Darren consents and a small but genuine smile breaks Josephine’s face as she leaves

He reopens hotMILF76 and sends her a photo of his sculpted body, cock in hand, then erases the browser history

Darren emerges from the bedroom in a singlet and compression tights

Josephine is cutting her toenails on the couch and watching Oprah, the laptop deep in conversation

The lift is silent

The gym is empty

The walls are mirrors reflecting infinite running machines

Three large flat-screen televisions hang from the ceiling

A black man wearing a baseball cap stands in front of a Lamborghini

Ample-bodied nymphs writhe

Renovation

Infomercial

Darren starts with a quick five K then moves on to tuning the finer points of what is already a high-performance musculature

Endorphins glaze his million-fold reflection, but Darren is shaken from his reverie by the entrance of Bradley and Jane Acton

Darren has known them for years

Brad and he were on the rowing team together at high school

Jane used to date an old friend of his, James Maxwell

Maxwell got a job with a mining company based in Sierra Leone, or was it Burma? She is the head of HR at a large bank

Brad is junior partner at a consulting firm

Like Darren, they are wearing black tights and matching singlets

“Hi!” they say

Hands are shaken, eyes met, cheeks pecked

“How is the lovely Josephine?” Jane asks

Darren says she’s great, really getting involved in the business

Brad asks after the vitamin trade

His deliberate use of the word trade irks Darren

It’s a business, you jug-eared cunt

The Actons mount the treadmills and begin to run, as one, left, right, left, right

“We must have you two over sometime for nibbles,” says Jane

Left, right, left, right

“Yes, it’s been far too long,” someone says, not meaning it

Darren makes a date to spite them

“Bye,” he says

Left, right, left, right, left

“Bye!” they say without looking around

Darren re-enters the apartment

Josephine is sitting where he left her but an empty teacup suggests movement

“Darren?” “Yes?” “We’ll go tomorrow instead OK? Can you find something to do tonight? Collette is coming over

” “I know

” Collette is Josephine’s best friend, confidant and enabler

Since age 12, they attended a school cloistered in the attitudes of a bygone era and burdened by an aesthetic sense to match

To watch a group of girls from Bayview Anglican Girls School walk down the street, or BAGS, as they are affectionately known, one might be forgiven for wondering if the portal that swallowed the class at Hanging Rock was ejecting them in all their wide-brimmed glory into the present

It may have happened that Collette and Josephine, upon meeting, recognised in the other the pain of unceasing visual molestation and became inseparable

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